[UPDATED] We’ve got the complete list of the 2013 Eisner Award winners and more in this week’s News Round-up!

And the Eisner goes to…

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were held Friday night at Hilton San Diego Bayfront, and some of the ceremony’s biggest winners were Pantheon’s Building Stories, which won awards for Best New Graphic Novel, Best Writer/Artist (for creator Chris Ware), Best Lettering (for creator Chris Ware), and Best Publication Design (for creator Chris Ware); Image Comics’ Saga (won awards for Best New Series, Best Continuing Series, and Best Writer for series co-creator Brian K. Vaughan); Dark Horse Books’ Blacksad: Silent Hell (Best U.S. Edition of International Material and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist for co-creator Juanjo Guarnido), and Hawkeye artist David Aja, who took home the awards for Best Penciller/Inker (which he shared with Daredevil and Rocketer: Cargo of Doom artist Chris Samnee) and Best Cover Artist. Interestingly, Aja and Samnee were the only creators who won for their work on a Marvel title, although an argument can be made that IDW’s Best Archival Collection win for David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil Born Again: Artist’s Edition should count as a joint win for Marvel. DC had it even worse: The second-leading North American comics publisher’s only mention in the winners list came by way of Dave Stewart’s Best Coloring win for his work on an astounding seven titles spread across three different publishers, one of which was DC’s Batwoman. For those of you keeping score at home and/or readying your arguments for the annual “Which publisher won the Eisners?” shootaround at your local comic book shop, here’s the breakdown of Eisner wins by publisher:

Marvel – 3 (two Marvel artists were tied for an Eisner for their work on separate Marvel titles giving the publisher 2 “wins” in one category, and one of the winning artists was also nominated for his work on an IDW title)

Fantagraphics – 2

BOOM! Studios/kaBOOM! – 1

FSG -1

HarperCollins – 1

MonkeyBrain Comics (digital) – 1

self-published (distributed by comiXology) – 1

University Press of Mississippi – 1

VIZ Media – 1

Abrams ComicArts – 1

Center for Cartoon Studies/Disney Hyperion – 1

TokyoPop – 1 (shared with Image Comics)

DC Entertainment – 1 (shared with Dark Horse and Image Comics)

Chris Ware’s innovative graphic novel Building Stories is made up of 14 printed works—four broadsheets, three magazines, two strips, two pamphlets, a four-panel storyboard, a hardcover book, and a “Little Golden Books“-style book—that can be read in any sequence, packaged in a boxed set that also has comic strips printed on its surfaces. (Photo credit: Julian Andrews)

The winners and nominees are enumerated in full below, with the winners highlighted in bold:

Bill Finger Excellence in Comic Book Writing Award

Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award

Odds and sods

Dark Horse to to bring Victor Santos’ acclaimed “silent” noir webcomic Polar to print, and the new edition will include dialogue for the first time. (Comixverse)

Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Wesley Morris on R.I.P.D., based on the Dark Horse Comics miniseries of the same title: “[R.I.P.D. is] so bad, it puts other movies’ badness in a new light. What was so tiresome about Man of Steel, so careless of World War Z, and so depressing in Grown Ups 2 doesn’t matter when you’re faced with something that feels more like a willful accident than a film.” (Grantland)

The A.V. Club’s Todd VanDerWerff wrote a series of thoughtful feature articles/essays on last year’s SDCC, and he’s back at it again. Here are links to his Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2 reports.

In case you missed them…

Don’t forget that we post new previews of trade paperbacks and hardcovers every week. This week, we’ve got previews of eight books, including an updated preview of Steven T. Seagle and Stefano Gaudiano’s Kafka (now with more interior page images) and two of the latest hardcovers from BOOM! Studios’ newly-acquired imprint Archaia.

On the topic of reviews, we have part 2 of our reviews of the trades and hardcovers released for the month of June and the latest First Impressions article takes a look at the first issues of Sheltered, Uncanny, Ghosted, Avengers A.I., Blood Brothers, Quantum & Woody, TMNT New Animated Adventures, and more.

In this week’s Roundtable, Comixverse staffers and contributors shared their memories of the most disappointing toys and games from their childhood.

And as an antidote to all those repressed memories of childhood toy anguish, we leave you now with a video of GameSpot’s Anna Prosser-Robinson doing a rundown of the best toys of SDCC 2013:

I love Saga but I don’t think a book should win (or even be nominated) for Best Continuing Story and Best New Story. I think a new book should be around at least a year before eligible for Best Continuing Story. Make sure it actually continues for a bit first.

I can see your point, but the problem with that suggestion is that a title’s longevity doesn’t necessarily reflect its critical merits… there are cases of very good comics getting cancelled due to low sales before they even hit the one-year mark while other comics that aren’t really all that good continue to sell well. Ultimately, the Eisners are intended to recognize critical merit, not retail performance. I will admit that Saga is tricky though, since it’s a bimonthly title and there’s significantly “less of it” to judge compared to the competition.

And that’s the point Z. It’s “continuing” series. That means it’s been continuing. If a book gets canceled after the first year, regardless of how critically acclaimed it is, ultimately it’s not a continuing series.

Continuing to me, means sustained, that the title has been able to maintain sustained critical acclaim, or a new writer was able to achieve acclaim with a book.

Oh, I agree that there has to be a minimum number of issues for a comic to be judged on, but I’d say a year minimum isn’t significantly different from whatever minimum the Eisner committee is using (which I think is 4 to 8 issues) given how different and sporadic publishing schedules are these days.

The problem with using the year-minimum is that it doesn’t take into account creative team changes and fill-ins… a creative team could knock it out of the park for something like the first 11 months of a run and absolutely earn an Eisner, and then maybe a fill-in creative team comes in at the 12th month of the year and turns in utter tripe. Does the year-minimum mean that the fill-in creative team gets to share the award with the “real” creative team on the book?

Ultimately though, I think the issue has less to do with whatever arbitrary measure the committee uses to define a “continuing series” than the Eisners removing what I think are two very important categories a few years ago: Best Storyline and Best Limited Series (the former has been removed, while the latter has been folded into the Best Continuing Series category).

I don’t know what the time marker should be for a “continuing” series, but I agree it should be around more than a year. I also want to weigh in that start stop projects should be eliminated but I can’t figure out how to do it without eliminating so many independent projects.

Year is just a number threw out there, but definately should be more then 4 to 8. Best Storyline should be in there to cover those books that get canceled due to sales or creative team leaves after an arc or two. Best limited series should be added back as well especially nowadays with so many creator-owned books coming out that are limited series.

For example, Who Is Jake Ellis?, that is a limited series.

But the Eisner’s put Locke & Key in as continuing series even though it’s been a series of mini-series.

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[…] How about that Saga, huh? Also worth noting: David Aja, Blacksad: A Silent Hell, Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score, Adventure Time, Dark Horse Presents, David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil Born Again: Artist’s Edition, and Building Stories winning in many of the same (or at least similar) categories they won in July’s Eisner Awards. […]